Quote Originally Posted by Nizzi View Post
I'm unsure of why you continue to build narratives and draw conclusions that aren't there solely to suit your own opinions. Astrologian was more popular last tier for a number of reasons:

WHM didn't get DPS neutral Lilies until 6.1, making WHM more punishing to heal on as its primary healing mechanic was a DPS loss
They hadn't announced the Astrologian rework, and also had not subsequently then announced that nothing would be reworked until 7.0 - currently leaving AST in a state where if you were unhappy with 6.0 changes you'll just wait until 7.0, and also leaving people who may be happy with it in a place where they see no reason to get invested in trying to learn the job when it is guaranteed to be heavily changed in a year-ish anyways.
Macrocosmos completely invalidating the P3S heal check, "Death's Toll" with a press of 1 button, instead of relying on both healers to press multiple buttons to heal the party to full.
The amount of effort and strain required to play Astrologian optimally versus every other healer compared to the reward put into it. Astrologian's 6.0 changes satisfied very few and made the job significantly clunkier than it was in Shadowbringers.

Also: Scholar and Astrologian have always been played less than White Mage. Simplying their job mechanics by changing cards and removal of SCH's DPS kit has done nothing to appeal to the players who play White Mage. It's almost as if people who play White Mage will not go to Scholar or Astrologian no matter how much you make the jobs "WHM but fairy" and "WHM but card".



"We're golden" by making Scholar and Astrologian worse? Scholar is the most played healer in DSR due to how great it's healing kit is; just because you don't like something doesn't mean it needs to change - just play White Mage or Sage.
When I said they were more popular, I just meant that from my anecdotal experience of seeing more astrologians during the first tier of raiding. What the numbers say is that when healers do savage, the white mage handedly defeats astrologian, with sage/scholar being tied depending on region. We can say this because the February census show that people are leveling all the healers pretty uniformly. It's only when these jobs get stress tested via savage content that players lean heavily towards white mage over astrologian. The October census chart suggests sage is preferred over scholar, but the regional healer differences between Japan and the US indicate it may be a cultural difference.

There is an overall healer shortage, so pretty much the whole healer role is problematic. However, high complexity is clearly not the answer given the astrologian's position in these charts. Working within the current system, a focus on functionality would be a more immediate solution. That's all I really mean.